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| J E P - Number 21 - 2005 / 2 |
| Voice over Silence, from Passi Passaggi Antonio Porta (translated by A. Molino) |
I This reading is meant for the dark I repeat every word to myself, use my finger to keep my place, repeat what I've heard mimic what I've understood, because love means: transforming one's distaste for a loved one transforming a filthy mouth into a budding bush a furrowed womb into an open field sealed pudenda into the lips of a fish until darkness and the black ceiling come crashing down on words II This reading can take place in broad daylight running one's finger across the page, keeping step with the pen as it spells out what I've yet to understand, recounts what I've yet to see because love means: following nature's plan, leaping into the void. III Love: I find the strength to spell it out, and already its mutant poisons run through my veins I don't know her (thrice repeated as an incantation) I know of no loved one know she doesn't exist and never will: this way I'm free to start out reassured I'll only talk for a few minutes then forever hold my peace - if I don't set my own limits I may never get up from this chair and if the escapade isn't timed in advance, the ghosts stay stuck in my throat instead of acting on stage: which is why I'm paid, and that I get paid is all-important, forced as I am to move my tongue through the dust of the theater; otherwise I stare in silence at the sky-blue unsurmountable wall that appears every day at dawn in my workroom's only window. There I continue to stare without speaking, or writing you a single word unless somebody drags me here with a rope of dollar bills. IV Apparent opposites stand unopposed, and yet the contradiction persists, a signal of writing's desire to erase itself writing of the word's to negate itself in speech (negative transfers of what we reDress) (upper cortex: self-destructive brain: jet engine mounted on a jalopy) the body, our history inscribed in the body is proof enough witness: all the severed fingers fallen into the mother's womb witness: the shit that gets mixed with the sperm. But my project entails the Other, its blueprint: positive articulation. (Other means change, without calling for capital punishment or any early demise - let the end relieve us of its own accord) V My desire: to open up your forehead before your wrinkles fence it in forever reveal its wide open fields before it puts on a cowl of cobwebs free it, stretching to the very roots of your gossamer hair from the circle of blood that partitions off your wig with the bulge of a brow shaven to resemble a ram's you'll butt and batter inside these four walls inside my belly where you'll flatten me into a pancake but first let me rummage through your forehead's locked drawer squeeze the invisible knob in my hand search your forehead now that it's free. VI there's a wick in the drawer I pull on the wick out comes a candle light the candle shed light on your mouth your mouth's full of wax spit out the wick I light the wick it becomes a beak a bird of prey's hook-shaped beak dipping into my eyes eyes liquefy visions spread VII then there's your body without its lost forehead your eyes in the clutches of a hen lips half-open a wall of teeth drives me back to the shadows mumbling: open sesame! there's your tongue your throat with my entire body I enter without getting up from my chair take my nipples between your fingers close my cock in your armpit, dry me off with your hair as mirrors multiply our handshakes in this boundless hoax you're to wrest me of language mute you brandish scissors and a silk scarf I can answer in jest and end up castrated or castrate myself with my answer - in which case you'll mock me and munch on the apple of my body / preserved under winter straw VIII in order to continue I offer you my eyes my glance on a dish my severed breasts / served on a tray to be stuffed slices of ham from my thighs that I'll stash away in a cupboard then serve fresh from the oven I'll pull it out au naturel with the sweet-smelling bread to ask you why you've zipped yourself up like your lips I'm cracked without entering the dream when I exit you're there sleeping not knowing if I'm there if I drip my seed down your hair when you stir I beg of you: suck me and it snaps like a fruit you can swallow grows back from the stump in a morning's time as the rose blossoms old age will gain the upper hand my hat and cane will fall into the abyss and I'll be led on my knees by a leash I no longer know how to sing IX trace it with a finger, does my body exist? ORG you know it doesn't, little boy? can't find the SPOT you're looking for? don't you know ASM doesn't exist, pinocchio? and did momma ever wash your birdie? ORG you know it exists along with ASM if finger tickles finger ad infinitum? are you sure it's a tingle you feel, you puppet? and do I have a dickeybird too? is it me or is he the one not in the mood? should I show you my moves, you puny asshole? rap you hard across the knuckles? or somewhere else? (Can you really be such a clod?) then what about me if you can't get inside? how will I feel if you simply don't fit? eat if you pullout and run? if you come in your pants how about making me something to eat some luscious side-dish roast potatoes boiled cauliflower olive oil onions and celery with lots of wine to guzzle down and loads of fruit to stick up my hole Listen boy, are you for real? IX (cont'd) I'll freeze you, consume you, slice by slice top your pubis with heaps of whipped cream first those slender thighs those arms then I'll suck on your sauteed fingers cook your eyes sunny-side up, don't you like the idea? Here I am starving and you want to screw? make me have babies to eat? do you really think bread comes out of my pussy? or ducklings you can gnaw to the bone? I'll leave nothing but your bones behind / whereas I will enter the earth, and be fruitful already I feel roots up my ass and can hear the rain on its way to fill my mouth I can hear frogs squirting away already and newborn fish... if you sow your tongue, behold a lake. X you and I will not be until two becomes one, and happy until one equals two in becoming one so let me propose a game that little by little we hook up suck each other up until our feet bare roots our eyes grow leaves so goats come nibbling at our hands and the hunger cycle / starts again XI I think I saw a rooster or a baby dragon on a leash or a giant bat starting the dance or a naked girl with no arms or nothing but arms across supple breasts or a smothering kiss without any milk or a man with his throat slit or a knife made of bread inside the womb or an endless flight through the hole XII " . .. but if all the blood / spilled spurts back into my veins / and my ice-cold body starts throbbing again / and again I should feel the tip of my flipper pressing hard against my zipper (please swallow the rhyme I just can't erase it) how I wish, my precious Pandora, that I could teach you how to love, when the mere sight of you whets my desire! But deafmute that you are, you watch me flee in horror..." XIII "Women do dream, my dear, they say so themselves: they eye a man for a split second behind a glass door, in a downtown cafe, or taking a leak outdoors by a tree, no matter, there's nothing wrong, and they dream of love, desire him on the spot, gladly experience love's trickle, gingerly guide a teacher's well-disposed hand. The body exists, my dear it's for real. Whereas food, provisions, cups and trays, silverware, the bread I like warm against my womb... Once again, my dear, I agree, not only words exist beyond words. I / am always very hungry..." XIV Here come the clowns, my love, the clowns they're here Ophelia with Hamlet, Hamlet with Ophelia my love / let's hear them / let's listen together as they talk about us, before we take a bath or stroll before we break for lunch or dinner -- we've made our choice, for VOICE OVER SILENCE Hamlet, 2 but getting back to mother and father: the male's always busy preparing his death new couples form get this much straight you'll see poison ooze into newly sucked ears fondled like lobes and lashes then in dreams steering images back to desire it's the mother who yanks open her toothed vulva chews on your penis spits it out snaps at your scrotum like she would at an apple leaves you flat on the bed stripped to the bone but now let's step things up since the dire awe of swollen images wants you put to silence you're afraid of language as it swells and already this metaphor tastes like cauliflower gardens erupting cabbages spilling curdled milk metaphors multiplying, if I keep talking there's no way out but to accept silence is worse out of desire I bring my head to the block facedown, yield to the tongue's blade where I relax and request that it be the mother: I've pronounced the sentence, now carry it out |
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